Last night, I had the pleasure of attending an open house celebration/20th anniversary for the Talaske acoustician firm. Along with many fine projects, Talaske is the firm responsible for the Grant Park’s Jay Pritzker Music Pavilion and ground-breaking sound reinforcement system. The crew at Talaske (along with building co-owners, The Sachem Company) threw a great party. It was fun touring the historically significant renovated building and cutting-edge acoustic testing facilities, not to mention chatting up the entire Talaske team.
Year: 2008
It Appears Streaming Is Beneficial
Yesterday’s poll on whether or not an on-demand, subscription based model for streaming online classical music would provide any benefits for classical music aficionados produced some intriguing results. The poll was prompted by a statement from online music retailer Passionato.com’s Director of Marketing & Business Development, Europe where he claimed that “a subscription model may be effective for sites offering a broader range of genres, it wouldn’t provide any benefits for classical music aficionados.”
I STILL Don’t Want To Buy Your Damn Music!
On 9/12/2008 the UK outlet for tech guru cnet.com published a review by Nate Lanxon of the new online digital music retailer, Passionato.com. The article lavishes praise on what amounts to a an online retail site that, compared to iTunes, simply provides more information about classical music recordings and an additional download format beyond standard MP3 (but only for selected recordings).
Honolulu Looks Forward With New Labor Agreement
Although it hasn’t garnered much national attention, a major event transpired over the past week in Hawaii as the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra (HSO) reached a three year agreement with their musicians. For an organization that has been plagued by a series of financial problems and board destabilization over the past few years, the agreement should serve as a concrete commitment to earlier sentiments of cohesion between the musicians and the board.
The All New Inside The Arts
The Inside The Arts platform upgrade is almost entirely complete. Over the weekend, the redesigned Inside The Arts homepage was launched along with redesigned versions of non divisi and Scanning The Dial. Sticks and Drones as well as the Inside The Arts Podcasts will be completed in a few days and the all new Adaptistration will be launched by the end of September to coincide with the 2009 Orchestra Website Reviews. All of the redesigned blogs have enhanced usability and the Inside The Arts homepage now features an RSS feed for each week’s Noteworthy and Popular articles.